Parent and Child Volume III., Child Study and Training eBook

In the preface of Dr. Guyer’s remarkable book,
“Being Well Born,” we read the following:
“It is no exaggeration to say that during the
last fifteen years, we have made more progress in
measuring the extent of inheritance and in determining
its elemental factors than in all previous time.”
If this is true, it would seem to be almost criminal
for teachers and parents to neglect to acquaint themselves
with the fundamental laws of heredity. This author
says further: “Since what a child becomes
is determined so largely by its inborn capacities,
it is of the utmost importance that teachers and parents
realize something of the nature of such aptitudes
before they begin to awaken them. For education
consists in large measure in supplying the stimuli
necessary to set going these potentialities and of
affording opportunity for their expression.”

Mendel’s law is probably the most important
known principle of inheritance. Through its application
practically all of the improvements in plants and
animals have been brought about. This law may
be explained as follows: A certain kind of pure
bred fowl is found which is either pure white or black.
If either color is mated with its own color the resulting
progeny will be true to the color of the parents, but
if a white and a black are crossed the result will
be blue fowls possessing one-half the characteristics
of each parent, but strange to say, if two blue fowls
are mated the progeny will not be all blue, one-fourth
will be white like one grandparent, another one-fourth
black like the other grandparent, and one-half will
be blue like the parents. If this experiment is
repeated with plants and animals having opposite characteristics,
the same ratios as above always result. This
indicates that truly heritable traits or characters
are separate units and are inherited independently.
The breeder is thus enabled through selecting the
traits or characters that are wanted and crossing
them with a well-known stock, to produce almost any
trait or quality that he desires. This law makes
it possible to estimate the results of cross breeding
with almost mathematical exactness. Improved varieties
of fruits, grains and vegetables have been produced
in this manner, and with animals marvelous results
have been achieved.

Luther Burbank, in his little book, “The Training
of the Human Plant,” says: “There
is not a single desirable attribute which, lacking
in a plant, may not be bred into it. Choose what
improvement you wish in a flower, a fruit, or a tree,
and by crossing, selection, cultivation and persistence,
you can fix this desirable trait irrevocably.”
And further: “If then we could have twelve
families under ideal conditions where these principles
could be carried out unswervingly, we could accomplish
more for the race in ten generations than can now
be accomplished in a hundred thousand years.
Ten generations of human life should be ample to fix
any desired attribute. This is absolutely clear,
there is neither theory nor speculation.”